INDUSTRIAL HEMP FIBRE PRODUCTION Where is the Tasmanian Government feasibility study of Industrial Hemp Fibre production in Tasmania? Surely this should be pursued as a viable and sustainable alternative to the wood-chip market? Wouldn't this make lots of jobs for Forestry Tasmania workers? Just a thought. The Forestry Industry -vs- The Environment is a false dichotomy. We can have a sustainable forestry (and hemp) industry (Malcolm Turnbull read "Jobs and Growth") and preserve high conservation value (and Tourism value $$$) forests at the same time. Move forward. Hemp-crete construction could provide fire-resistant, high Government energy rating, low cost housing in areas such as Tasman Peninsula, Bruny Island and the Huon.
Posts
Mural for Chigwell Community. This is the first public mural I have painted since I was physically assaulted in Glenorchy bus mall in 2014. I was punched in my face and the back of my head several times. After the attack I was too scared to take the bus to Bridgewater to visit my father who was dying. My dad died in September 2015. Painting this mural was good for me, I'm slowly regaining my confidence in public spaces. Even though I know that I could meet my attacker again.
BLACK MARKS ON YOUR SOUL Black marks on your soul, Eating you up, wearing you out. Black marks on your soul, Tying you up, filling you with doubt. Those black marks on your soul, They’ve eaten your heart. There’re black marks on your soul, And they’ll tear you apart. But I’ve no time for remorse. I shan’t mourn for your corpse.
BUCAAN HOUSE APPEAL I have donated my modest collection of artworks by Hobart street artists to Bucaan Community House at Chigwell. Including works by Jamin Kluss, Jake Seven, and Martin Nester. Bucaan House may host an auction to raise funds. If you and/or anyone you know has paintings to donate please call Mary-Anne on 6249 5363. Also, Bucaan House has a wall that they would like to use for a Community Mural. The wall is actually on the neighbouring property, but they have permission to paint on it. What they don't have is money. This job requires an artist, or group of artists, who want to do something good for the people of Chigwell, and are willing to volunteer their skills. Experience in Community Development (consultation and fundraising) is desirable. This is a good cause, any publicity Bucaan House gets will be an opportunity to highlight under-funding: funding for their Senior Citizens weekly social club has been removed. And Bucaan House wishes to prov...
TO DARK MOFO 2016 STREET ARTISTS Regarding open-access community art walls: legal graffiti spaces. I think the respected artists involved in this colab should join forces together with the Gods of MONA (and anyone else who supports the arts) to petition the Powers That Be to establish legal graffiti walls (for everyone, all ages) in Hobart, particularly the northern suburbs. What does Die Laughing Collective say to this idea? [...] That's exactly what I'm suggesting: get the permission of private property owners (eg: K&D Warehouse, Derwent Park) and the support of Council/s (eg: site maintenance, the provision of Youth Workers) together with Police approval... to allow all artists and young people total freedom of artistic expression (within reason) at the legal art wall/s site/s. I think it is time to advocate for this approach again. I believe that Hobart's street artists, if united and organised collectively, are sufficiently empowered to make this idea real...
DIATRIBE TO UTAS About how impossible it is to get a locker in Arts and everything that is wrong with UTAS : Nola of Arts Student Central has instructed me to go to Social Sciences Administration on Level 5 Social Sciences and ask "Are there any lockers available in this building?". Campus Services has instructed me to get a New User Form for the Online Works Request system signed by my Head of School. (I don't know who that is). Then submit it to Campus Services for consideration. (before I can even make the actual work request). Nola insists the lockers are being used because they have padlocks on them, so she is certainly not going to assist me to have the lockers opened. How do I deal with that kind of logic? I don't know. Basically I don't know what will happen when I go to Social Sciences Administration on Level 5 Social Sciences. But if past experience is anything to go by, I will not get reasonable answers. I am rarely o...
THE COMING APOCALYPSE As Nightfall descends we enter a 1000 year Dark Age. The Capitali$t Doom$day Machine is a cancerous growth that will kill millions and en$lave millions more. The Capitali$ts are $elling guns. They are closing the borders and amassing their arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, drones, surveillance tech, Psy Ops (Thought Control), and weapons of light and sound; machines to be used against us. They will protect their New World Order at any cost: at any cost to human life. Control must be maintained. Order must be enforced. Chaos must be made to serve the Capitali$t agenda. This is George Orwell’s 1984 and Terror is Gold$tein; the aeternal threat which is used to justify Austerity and The State of War. The Capitali$ts are dismantling Social Welfare globally. They will go further than Reagan and Thatcher. We will become again the peasants of the land; the serfs of the lord; slaves of the Capitali$t State. After 2050 AD Earths population will be over 10 Billion pe...
LETTER TO A FRIEND To Tom and friends, You’re on fire Tom ! I enjoy your and Shaa ’s Facebook posts about environmental sustainability, divestment from fossil fuels, and activism. You’re so young and passionate! How will you channel all of your energy? I urge you to think about the following questions (but of course you already have): Are the reforms to the education system proposed by Gonski just a good idea – or is social justice in education a basic human right? Similarly, is marriage equality for LGBTIQ people a good cause – or is it a basic human right too? If we all know that fracking, mining, and logging destroy the natural wealth of our environment – then why is it allowed to continue lawfully? If we know that major corporations exploit workers, the environment, and the economic system – why do we as a society allow them to exist? Corporate charters can be legally revoked. Why is socialism a dirty word? The political party Socialist Alliance Hobart has only half a doz...
ENTROPY Entropic nuances in the spaces between words. In conversation, hesitant mumblings, whispers of an unseen future. Shapes half glimpsed through the charades of corporate television programming. The neo-socialist rhetoric of the government is soothing our petty first-world concerns. New Goldsteins not yet known but commonly agreed upon. Exchanging glances furtively out of the corner of our eyes around the dinner table and the take-out shop. Who will be the next to take the fall? Which revolutionary leader will we chase into a hole so he can be dragged out and shot like a dog? Which civilian population will rise up in anger and riot when the Police have shot dead one of their young men? Last month a man stabbed another man on the streets of London and stayed to chat with the Press, knife in hand. We are bathed in the glow of high-definition live-feed transmissions as waves of edited sound-bite entropy wash over us. The nuclear family has long vanished. Mother, Father, and ...
THE VOID WITHIN In Memory of my Father People just fall through my hands, through the cracks of my life, like I am an open sieve. I don’t feel any attachment to anyone so I don’t lament their passing away into history. About so many people I think “well who the fuck were they” and “what was I thinking being with them anyway”? I don’t feel anything for any other human being and that is my truth and my path to travel. Faces and laughter swim into focus and then fade into blackness, swallowed by the fog of my thoughts. If I had a family would things be different? If my parents had treated me better would I be more human? It is an academic hypothetical question because the only reality is the way I am now. The damage is done. I cannot change. I’m trying to understand how it all came undone. How I let it all slip away. Why I felt so sick. Even now it’s all still falling apart. Like sand dunes eroding, unstoppable, inevitable. I’m swept beneath the shifting sands of my life. Sometim...
ON BEING GAY It’s not like I’m trying to be the Oscar Wilde of the 21 st century. But if that’s what you want, I’ll be it. I always wanted to be Andy Warhol. Or “Drella”, to those who knew him well. But now I listen to The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed and I miss Andy like a friend. In the 1950’s when Andy was first precariously employed at a magazine he took his homoerotic Blue Boy drawings to every gallery in New York to ask them to exhibit them. Andy had big balls; this could have ended his career before it had even begun. My generation includes Olympic swimmer Ian “Thorpedo” Thorpe and late actor Heath Ledger. We grew up listening to the songs of Ricki Martin on the radio. His name always reminded me of another Martin who shot up Port Arthur a year after I visited with my parents. I remember seeing a tall man with a blonde pony-tail there, he sort of glowed. I cut out the photo of him they ran in the newspaper and pinned it up on my wall. Long wavy blonde hair and pier...
A PRAYER TO MOTHER MOON Mother Moon rising in the sky I pray to you. Please forgive me. Heal my body and help me to forgive myself. Help me to learn and guide me. I tried so hard for so long, to be better than I am. Help me to accept myself. I was misled, I was hurt. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t live this way. The sick feeling in my guts: churning like sour water. Poison leeching into my body. The fear that never ends: the fear that grows. It is a tumorous swelling behind my eyes. All I know is fear. The fear inside me is an ocean of fear about to break forth onto the shore of reality. When will it split open my body from within and gush over the earth, drowning everyone in its path, consuming all? I am a vessel for fear. There is a monster inside of me. Humanity is a scared animal raging against the universe. The pain of sentient life! To know the misfortune of existence: pain, hunger, cold, fear, and predators large and small. We fuck to escape it all and only multiply our s...
BRISBANE STOR Y I walk into the lounge and XX has gagged and hog-tied XY with rope. XY is naked and in the doggy style position. XX forces a frozen ice block into XY’s anus. XX looks at me as if through a shard of obscured glass, hums something guttural and I catch the bass riff from Marilyn Manson’s ‘Tourniquet’. XX comes for me. My beloved the dominatrix will have me next. I stand on the back of a couch and start throwing whatever I can reach. My hand finds a supersize jar of Vegemite and I throw it. It misses XX by a mile and smashes near XY’s head. XY’s face is red. I leave. If you’ve ever seen the movie Dogma the scene was something like when Hitler is in Hell having a Pineapple inserted into his anus while wearing an S&M rubber French maid costume. Walking around West End I pass a party house I know and go in. There will be a gathering tonight, someone is going to Japan. I ask if I can stay the night. The party is a strangely sober affair with hushed gatherings of do...
MANIFESTO IN FIVE PARTS Part I: WOLF It’s dark outside. Butterflies are pounding at my window. They’re the size of dinner plates; soon they’ll break the glass. And hell will descend. His blood was so close, hot in his veins. Like love, like sex. He held me down on the pavement, he said: I will kill you. Just like years ago, the man above me with his hand pressing on my throat. I broke the hold and got on top, but I didn’t finish the fight instead I walked away. I won’t make the mistake again. In my dreams I stand my ground. It’s in my subconscious, in my future. The next time I saw him his face was covered with fresh scabs from a beating someone else gave him. He got what he was looking for; it’s a game for some men. I believe I was born to fight, I need to fight. I need to feel the rush of blood in the heat of the fight. It’s like love, or like hunting a beast you admire. Without fear there is no reason to live at all. I can’t look away when I see them. It’s like we are draw...
RADIKAL ISOLATION My account of survival against the toxic psychological onslaught of high capitalism in 2014 CE. People tell me I look angry. (I look angry? Yeah well you’re ugly) I’m not angry. I’m just good looking and staunch, serious like a heart attack. I have closed my body to sex. I got the idea from a Madonna lyric, “I’m going to close my body now”. I have had several sexual partners. I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy any of it (the f*!king), I did enjoy some of it. But mostly I felt like I couldn’t make a meaningful connection with another person’s body. (Hey there’s always porno) I live alone and I pursue a life of social isolation with no physical intimacy. At times I have tried to be pro-social, and I have been very successful in gratifying my ego. I have soared to new heights and experienced a love for and communion with the brotherhood of man. When I looked around I realised everyone was now jealous of me because I had gone too far and achieved more than they coul...